


Made on Gallifrey

by celedan



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Children of Earth Fix-It, Happy Ending, Ianto is an Android, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, mention of Susan Foreman, mentions of past regenrations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 12:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11646951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celedan/pseuds/celedan
Summary: The Doctor is dying, and he just has to say goodbye to Rose and Jack. But just as he wants to start up the TARDIS again, some mysterious readings lure him into a cemetery in Cardiff, right up to the grave of Ianto Jones. Baffled, he can't believe what's before his eyes.





	Made on Gallifrey

The Doctor convulsed when a new wave of pain wrecked his body. It wasn't long now. But before he could regenerate, he had a few more of his friends to visit. After Martha, Mickey and Sarah-Jane, he had left his Rose. And Jack.  
Breathing in sharply through his nose to try to breathe away his pain, he just wanted to put in new coordinates when a mad blinking on one of the monitors made him stop. Frowning, he put on his glasses, and leaned in to closely study these strange readings the TARDIS had picked up.  
“Cardiff?!” he exclaimed. “Why's it always got to be bloody Cardiff... Must be a Rift thing.”  
Typing away for a while, his eyebrows rose in disbelief. The readings originated in a cemetery, but that wasn't what was strange about this...  
“It can't be,” he whispered. He blinked, and squeezed his eyes shut, but when he opened them again, the readings were still there, still saying the same. Right there, in the middle of a cemetery in Cardiff had to be an artificial life form of Gallifreyan origin.  
Without hesitation, the Doctor ran out of the control room to search for a hand-held scanner, then he set the TARDIS for Cardiff. He parked her close to the readings' source, then he stormed through the door.   
It was night time, and the cemetery was ill-lit. A few times, he almost tripped while his gaze was glued to the monitor of the small device he carried. He whirled around, looking for the correct grave since the scanner wasn't that accurate.   
Curiously, he stepped up to a few graves that came into question, and held up a torch, looking for the names on the headstones. He froze when the light illuminated the name on the third stone.   
He knew that name...  
But where...  
Then it hit him. Ianto Jones. He had been one of Jack's people. He was dead?! The Doctor let his gaze slide lower. Died last year. Poor boy.   
He held up his scanner again, pointing it directly at the grave.   
Yep, accurate or not, the readings went haywire on this spot, blinking like mad.   
What the Hell was going on here?! How could a dead Torchwood agent's body give off readings that had no business being here on Earth!? As far as he knew, the only Time Lords to ever visit Earth in the last few hundred years had been him, Susan, and the Master. And he really didn't believe that the Master had anything to do with this, planting a mole inside Torchwood somehow, or whatever he could have cooked up in his disturbed mind.   
“Well,” he said out loud, “I've no choice, have I.”  
He nodded to himself, and went back into the TARDIS.  
“Good opportunity to test that Sontaran teleportation thingy I nicked a while ago.”  
He needed a little while to dig the device up, but when he'd found it behind the coffee maker, he immediately set it up in the control room, and hooked it up to the TARDIS just to be on the safe side concerning the exact coordinates.   
“Okay, Mr. Jones, let's see what we have here,” he mumbled while feeding the grave's coordinates to the device. “I hope you are what I think you are. Otherwise this could get really yucky.”  
The device beeped, signalling readiness.   
“There we go.”  
And the Doctor pushed the button.   
A flash illuminated the TARDIS, and the smell of ozone hung in the sizzling air, and before him on the TARDIS' floor lay Ianto Jones.   
Who looked pretty good for a seven months old corpse.  
The Doctor swooped down on him, his Sonic Screwdriver already whirring and beeping in full mode.  
“It can't be,” he whispered over and over, but he had the data right there on his Sonic: Ianto Jones was an Android of Time Lord origin.   
They'd used these artificial lifeforms for hundreds of years on Gallifrey. Their design had been almost perfect. They not only looked one hundred percent human (not Time Lord because they had only one heart which was enough to let them function), but could replicate every bodily function if they so wished. They even had a fully developed consciousness, could feel pain and emotions. But they never had any rights, were nothing more than slaves. They'd been utilised as workers and bodyguards since they were much stronger than a Time Lord or normal human, as servants and babysitters, and even as sex toys. If need be, their owner could switch off their free will and independent thinking to keep them under control.   
It had been a normal practice on Gallifrey for so long. But so had been slavery here on Earth. Only because it was common practice for hundreds of years didn't mean that it was right.  
When the Time War began, the Androids were the first to be send into battle as cannon fodder while at the same time, the factories had worked day and night to build Warrior-Androids. They were build for eternity, but nonetheless, they could be destroyed.  
And they were.   
It had been like leading lambs to the slaughter since most of them weren't warriors. The same went for most of Gallifrey's people as well, but they, too, were send into battle when the soldiers, artificial as well as Time Lord, fell. If the Doctor hadn't sealed the planet away, Rassilon would have sacrificed every single child of Gallifrey for his victory.  
Irritated, the Doctor shook his head, forcefully banning the horrible memories of these dark times and of the events connected to it having only happened a few hours ago. Instead, he turned to Ianto again.   
He switched off his Sonic. “Hmm,” he made. “Whatever killed him must have put him into sleeping mode. Apparently, he's only rebooting now. His sleep must have been so deep that he couldn't power up his systems any more on his own.” Making contemplative noises, the Doctor looked around. “But of course!” He slapped his hand against his forehead. “The arrival of the TARDIS on Earth must have started the rebooting process. He's running on vortex energy after all. The TARDIS just being on Earth seems to have been enough to trigger the process. But why not the Rift? He's been buried here in Cardiff all this time. Maybe not strong enough? Hm...” The Doctor shrugged. “Doesn't matter.”  
Determined, he picked Ianto up to bring him into the infirmary, but then he thought better, and put him down again near the console. He looked down on the still Android contemplatively. “A little vortex energy boost should do the trick, but how does this work,” he mumbled aloud. “I can't remember.”  
He jumped up in excitement, starting to turn the TARDIS upside down for a manual on Time Lord Androids. “Come on!” he cried while rooting around in the depths of a cupboard in the pantry. “We have to have something like this. Aha!” Finally, he located it under the coffee maker this time where he'd obviously put it for stabilisation. What is it with the coffee maker, he thought irritably, but pushed the thought quickly from his mind.   
Hastily, the Doctor scanned the manual, flipping to the rebooting section.   
“Hm, yes, I understand...” After some more reading, he turned to Ianto again, kneeling down beside him, and gently turning his head to the side. Delicately, he felt at the base of his skull, and after some searching found a small bump, not much bigger than a mole. He gently pressed it, and the skin covering the small elevation slid aside. Grabbing a delicate wire, the Doctor connected it to the tiny connection point, the other end went into the TARDIS.   
“All right, girl. Show me what you've got!” And with that, the Doctor turned the lever, catapulting them into the vortex.   
The TARDIS gained speed. Faster and faster she sailed through the vortex, and when she'd reached her maximum speed, the Doctor opened the connection, allowing the vortex energy powering the TARDIS to flow into Ianto Jones' body.  
The Android convulsed when his body was suffused with the potent energy, and suddenly, he gasped, reminding the Doctor painfully of Jack.   
Ianto drew in deep breaths, and started coughing, curling up on the TARDIS' floor while the Doctor cut the connection. Quickly, he removed the wire from Ianto's head since he didn't know how much of his origins, if anything at all, he remembered. Most people tended to become hysterical when wires were suddenly sticking out of their heads.  
“Easy,” the Doctor soothed the young man, and clumsily rubbed his shoulder. “You're safe. Ev'rything's all right.”  
Ianto had stopped coughing, but he still pulled deep breaths into his lungs for a little while longer until he finally calmed down. “Where...” But the question was redundant when in the next second, he sat up, and looked around. “Oh,” he made, and his gaze met the Doctor's. “It's you...”  
The Time Lord nodded.  
“I died,” Ianto said shakily.  
The Doctor smiled a little crookedly. “Kind of.”  
“What's that supposed to mean!?” he demanded, now having composed himself completely again. “Where's Jack.”  
“Ehm, I don't know. I just pulled you out of your grave.”  
“You pulled me out of my what!?”  
The Doctor grimaced, and he so wished for one of his Companions right now. They would have scolded him for the bit not good things spewing unfiltered from his mouth. “Ehm, yeah, sorry. Let's discuss this with a nice cup of tea, what do you say?”  
Ianto nodded mutely, still overwhelmed at the prospect that, apparently, he'd been in a grave.   
“Which date?” he suddenly asked when he staggered to his feet.  
“We're in the vortex at the moment, so there's...”  
“You know how I mean this!” Ianto snapped, and the Doctor shut up sheepishly.   
“Sorry, yeah, ehm... Seems you died over six months ago.”  
Ianto felt his knees going weak, and only with the Doctor's help didn't he end up on the floor again. The Doctor positioned him on the padded bench in the control room.   
“Jack believes I'm dead for six months!?” he breathed in shock, staring unseeingly ahead.  
“Hm, yeah. Everyone things you're dead.”  
Ianto glared at him, and only then did it dawn on the Doctor. “Oh. You and him, you are...”  
“Yes.”  
“Okay. Sorry, didn't know that.”  
“Where is he?” Ianto asked again stubbornly.   
“I really don't know,” the Doctor sighed. “And before we find him, there are a few things you should know.” He blinked at Ianto curiously. “Don't you want to know why you're here, and why you aren't dead?”  
“Well, ehm, yes, of course” Ianto stammered. “I suppose.”  
The Doctor shook his head in fond exasperation while helping Ianto up. “You humans. Come on. Tea's waiting.”  
Obediently, Ianto followed the Doctor through the vast corridors of the TARDIS until they eventually arrived in a spacious but homey kitchen.   
“Sit down,” the Doctor offered, and Ianto did so, the protest dying on his lips that it should be him serving he Time Lord, not the other way around.   
In the meantime, his shock had lessened somewhat, making way for curiosity. This was the TARDIS after all, the legendary ship Jack occasionally had waxed poetic about almost obscenely. So, he should take the chance to have a look around while he still was in the right mind to concentrate on something like that. He had the feeling that after the Doctor had spoken to him, exploring the TARDIS was the least important thing on his mind.   
While Ianto satisfied his curiosity, the Doctor watched his guest under lowered lashes while making them tea. “Do you recognise any of this?”  
Ianto blinked at him in confusion. “Why should I? I've never been on the TARDIS.”   
“Yes, you're right, of course.”  
Ianto frowned at the Doctor, but the Time Lord said no more.  
When he'd served them tea, they drank in companionable silence for a while.   
But eventually, Ianto put down his empty cup, the clinking when china met china shockingly loud in the otherwise silent kitchen. Both men flinched.  
“I think, you wanted to explain a few things.”   
“Yes...”  
Ianto raised one eyebrow expectantly. “Well?”  
The Doctor sighed. “There's no easy way to tell you this.”  
“Then tell me the hard way.” Ianto shrugged. “I'm a Torchwood agent. Nothing can shock me any more.”  
“Oh, believe me, this one will.” But nonetheless, the Doctor smiled at Ianto's brave attitude. Maybe he would take it better than expected.  
“Okay. Ianto Jones, you're not human.”  
This, indeed, made Ianto speechless for a little while. When he eventually found his voice again, the only thing he could utter was a small “Oh”.  
The Doctor threw him a crooked smile. “Yeah.”  
“I'm... I'm an alien!?” Ianto hated how small and timid his voice sounded, but this was much to take in after all.  
“Not exactly...”  
“Doctor!”  
“Yeah, sorry, sorry! You're a Time Lord Android.”  
Ianto blinked at him. “A what!?”  
The Doctor shrugged. “On Gallifrey – that's my home world – we had these Androids. They were our servants, bodyguards, nannies, sex toys.”  
Ianto snorted bitterly. “Oh, then it all makes sense suddenly that I always was so eager to take on the job of cleaning the Hub.” His expression turned even more morose. “And how eager I always was to please Jack in bed.”  
“No, no, no,” the Doctor assured him hastily. “That's just your personality. Well, yeah, the cleaning may have happened on a subconscious level, but a lot of people have that compulsion. And for the... uhm... You love him, don't you?”  
A small nod.  
“See. Wanting to make the one you love happy isn't a bad thing...” The Doctor frowned. “Except when you have to do things you don't want to do during the, ehm, pleasing. Then that's bad.” The Time Lord cleared his throat in embarrassment. “That didn't happen, right? Jack was... decent to you, right?”  
“Yes, of course!” Ianto assured equally as embarrassed.   
“Uff, yeah, okay. He can be a little... overexcited at times, and maybe he didn't notice that you did certain... practices just to please him. But when you say... yeah. Otherwise I would have been very disappointed in Jack.”  
“Nothing new there,” Ianto muttered darkly, and the awkward atmosphere between them became even more awkward, and teetered off into an awkward silence.  
“Could we please change the topic,” Ianto suddenly burst out, and the Doctor nodded emphatically.  
“Please.”  
“Good.” Ianto cleared his throat. “Back to me being a robot.”  
“No, not a robot. An Android.”  
“And where's the difference in that?”  
“Weeell, a robot is a machine, no matter what it looks like. An Android is a humanoid robot. It looks and acts like a human. And then there are Cyborgs as well, part human, part machine.”  
“But... I'm feeling like a human as well. And I need to breathe and eat and sleep. Doesn't that rather make me a Cyborg?” A sudden, unbidden image of Lisa's half converted body sprang up in his mind, and he shuddered, not wanting to imagine such a fate.  
“No. You're one hundred percent machine. The Gallifreyan Androids were so perfect that almost nothing could discern them from a living being. They even fooled medicinal instruments. Short of cutting you open, nobody would have been the wiser that you're not human. But then, if they wanted, they could switch off all their humanoid bodily functions again as well. Makes a lot of things easier in the long run. Whoever brought you to Earth probably switched on yours to blend in. Or you did it yourself. Don't you have any memories? None at all?”  
“No. And... I remember my childhood with my parents and my sister. I remember growing up in Cardiff. How can that be? If I'm completely artificial, I shouldn't age, should I?”  
“That's right. You were fabricated as you are right now... Ev'rything all right?”  
Suddenly, Ianto had become white as a sheet. He gulped heavily. “I don't age,” he whispered.   
“Well, no, you don't. I just told you,” the Doctor frowned.   
Ianto looked up at him, a sudden hopeful, joyous sparkle in his eyes. “How long will I, err, live?”  
The Doctor shrugged. “You run on vortex energy. You were build for eternity. As long as you recharge every few hundred years with vortex energy, you should last a few million years thanks to your overeager creators, if you don't get blown up or something of the like. Why? Is a long life that important to you?”  
Ianto snorted. “I work... worked for Torchwood. I've accepted the fact that I would probably die young a long time ago. No.” He shook his head, and suddenly smiled at the Doctor. “Don't you understand what this means?! I can be with Jack! If I'm not human, and don't age like one, he won't have to lose me!”  
The Doctor looked blankly at Ianto who snorted in exasperation. “You don't understand, do you? Jack told me about Rose. Wouldn't you grab the chance and hold on tight when you could be with her again? No catch, no obstacles?”  
A painful grimace spread over the Doctor's features. “You're right. I'm sorry, I didn't think.” He nodded, and threw Ianto a sad smile. “Of course you should have the chance to be with Jack. I'll take you to him. I just wanted to go looking for him anyway when I stumbled upon you.”  
“Why?”  
“To say goodbye.”  
Ianto scrutinised the Doctor in alarm. “What happened?”  
“I'm dying, Ianto. Slowly, but I can feel it. I haven't long now. I wanted to use the time I have left to say goodbye to my friends.”  
“Jack will be happy that you consider him your friend.” Ianto looked even more closely at the Doctor. “But... you can regenerate, right? That's what Time Lords do?”  
“Yeah, but this me will die. I'll be a completely different man.”  
“I understand,” Ianto replied sadly. “Is there nothing you can do?”  
“No. Unfortunately not.”  
“I'm sorry.”   
“Don't worry about me. Let's talk about you. Before I can take you to Jack, I want to try repairing your memory hard drive. You have to know who you are.”  
“Who? Not what?”  
The Doctor made a dismissive gesture. “The times where Androids were seen as machines are long over. They're considered equal to other sentient beings.”  
“Phew, good to know.”  
“Yep. Come on. I'm pretty sure I'll manage to pull forth your memories again. Can't be so hard.”  
Ianto gulped. “Will it hurt?”  
“Hmm... I don't know. I think not.” With a manic, and in his opinion probably reassuring smile, the Doctor grabbed Ianto's wrist, and tugged him up, pulling him out of the kitchen. Ianto let himself be dragged through the in-numeral corridors until they eventually reached a laboratory. He gulped again at seeing all the scientific equipment. Some things he recognised, but most of this stuff was completely, well, yeah, alien to him.   
“What's your plan?” Ianto asked uneasily while watching the Doctor suspiciously who rummaged around in a drawer.  
“Don't know yet. But I found this instruction manual for Gallifreyan Androids.”  
“How reassuring,” Ianto muttered, and gladly sank down on the laboratory table.   
The Doctor bounced up to get the manual which he'd left in the control room. He waved the thick, leather-bound book at Ianto victoriously when he came back. At Ianto's raised eyebrow, he simply shrugged. “Time Lords are old-fashioned.”  
Ianto grunted at that, and crossed his arms before his chest, condemned to just sit there for the time being, and wait while the Doctor leafed through the thick instruction manual.   
After a while that had seemed like eternity to Ianto, and during which he'd become even more nervous with every passing second, the Doctor snapped the book shut, and plonked it loudly on the table beside Ianto.   
“Okay, let's see what's inside your head.”  
Ianto reared back in shock. “You want to cut me open?!”  
“What!?” The Doctor frowned irritated. “Of course not. I'll just connect you to the TARDIS with this.” He held up a thin wire that didn't look much different from a normal network cable from Earth.  
“Haven't you ever noticed the small bump at the base of your skull?”  
Instinctively, Ianto's hand flew to the back of his head, instantly locating the tiny bump. “Well, yes, but I always thought it was a mole.”  
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Humans.”  
“I thought we established that I'm not human.” Ianto glared challengingly.  
“At the moment you have the memories of being a human. That makes you as good as human.” He looked pointedly at Ianto. “Including all of humanity's vices like seeing but not observing. Horrible habit.”  
“Oh please.” Ianto crossed his arms before his chest once more, this time in indignation. “As if you're that much better.”  
The Doctor sniffed. “Of course. I'm a Time Lord.”  
“Fat lot of good that does you,” Ianto grumbled under his breath, and ignored the Doctor's indignant huff.  
Uneasily, Ianto waited with bated breath while the Doctor fumbled around behind him, and he flinched reflexively when the Doctor suddenly pushed the small pin with the thin wire attached to it into the slot on the back of Ianto's head.   
“All right, let's have a look at you,” the Doctor twittered in excitement, and hammered away on the keyboard before him lightning-fast.  
Fascinated, but shocked at the same time, Ianto stared wide-eyed at the screen where a set of data had popped up, much like a normal computer program.  
“That... that's me?” he asked in a small voice.  
“Yeah,” the Doctor replied quite chipper. “That's your hard drive. Do you want to see what's actually inside of you?”  
“No!”  
“Hmpf, spoil-sport.”  
Ianto bristled, but let the Doctor type away for a while, not really understanding any of the things the Time Lord did.  
After a lot of clever grunting and “hms”, the Doctor eventually proclaimed, “I think I know what I'll have to do though I think I have to shock you for this.”  
“What!?”  
“I'm sorry. It's not like I can pull up your memories again with just typing in a command or throwing a switch. It's al little more complicated than that.”  
Ianto gulped. “And... and if you fry my whole system?”  
“Naahh, that won't happen. You're a Time Lord construction. You can take a little electricity.”  
“Good to know,” Ianto grumbled, but he didn't put up any resistance when the Doctor fished out wires and other bits of technology out of different drawers.  
The Doctor was so excited that at first, he didn't notice Ianto's gloomy look, but when he finally turned to him, armed with a wire in each hand, he noticed Ianto's face. He frowned. “What's up?”  
“Nothing,” Ianto parried.   
Putting the wires aside for the moment, the Doctor sat down next to Ianto onto the laboratory table. “Come on,” he urged gently. “You can tell me.”  
“Well... I'm just afraid that as soon as I remember who I am that this is not me any more, that I'm less than before,” Ianto admited softly.  
The Doctor frowned. “That's stupid. You're just the same man, with or without certain memories. And you've always been an Android. The only difference is that soon you'll know where you come from, but that doesn't change who you are. You mustn't allow this knowledge to change your perception of you. You're still Ianto Jones.”  
Ianto nodded, but avoided the Doctor's sizzling look. “I suppose...”  
“No, really,” the Doctor assured him. “I know it's quite a shock, but once you get over it, you won't feel any different. You'll see, you'll still be you, just with a few improvements.”  
They both grimaced suddenly since they couldn't help themselves that this sounded suspiciously like Cybermen politics. “Sorry,” the Doctor mumbled. “But you know what I mean, yeah?”  
Ianto sighed heavily. “Yeah, I know... Then come on, let's do this. I want to get back to Jack.”  
The Doctor slapped Ianto's thigh soundly, making Ianto grimace in pain, and jumped up eagerly. “That's the right attitude!”  
“By the way, how am I supposed to recharge every few hundred years?” Ianto asked after a few minutes while the Doctor tinkered away with the wires he so tried not to eye nervously. “Can I call you, and you hook me up to the TARDIS, or what?”  
“Hm, maybe. Have to think about it. But maybe being with Jack is enough.” The Doctor waved his hand dismissively. “The man exudes vortex energy like other people pheromones.”   
“He has those as well,” Ianto piqued in drily.  
“Okay, yeah, bad example. But you get the gist, right. His vortex energy could be enough to sustain you. After all, he has an infinite store of it.”  
Ianto snorted. “You mean shagged into recharge?”  
At this, the Doctor blushed. “That's one way of putting it. And now hold still.”  
Their conversation had distracted Ianto from the Doctor's actions, and now he found himself hooked up to several wires that led into some scientific equipment standing around in the lab. The Doctor threw him a mad grin, his fingers already resting on some buttons, ready to push them. “Here we go.”  
And then, he pushed the buttons.   
Ianto froze as electricity suddenly ran through his whole body, bracing himself for the excruciating pain...  
But amazingly, there wasn't any pain. He only felt an annoying tingling in his body, but no pain.  
“I switched of your pain receptors,” the Doctor told him while typing away on one of the computers once more.   
“Thanks for the warning,” Ianto ground out, but inwardly, he was glad of course.   
But suddenly, he froze again. Not in pain, but because flashes upon flashed of memories crashed down upon him all at once.   
He saw a strange world... no, not so strange, his home. Gallifrey. He saw the family he'd been the property of, saw the small girl whose babysitter and friend he'd been. He saw her grow up into a independent, fierce young woman with her own will that all too often clashed with her stern, traditional father's.   
“Susan!” he gasped when he remembered her name, and he didn't see the Doctor's frown.   
Then, she was gone. His only friend and confident on the whole of Gallifrey was gone, running away with her grandfather who was so much like her, much to her father's chagrin. And his name had been...  
“Doctor!” he gasped, then, everything went black around him.

When Ianto came to, the Doctor perched next to him on the cool laboratory table, studying him with a mixture of awe, suspicion, and apprehension.  
Groaning, he sat up, and accepted the cup of tea the Doctor pushed at him although he now knew that he didn't really need it.  
“How are you feeling?” the Doctor asked calmly although it was quite clear that he burned with other questions.  
“Fine.” He sipped the hot tea, and sighed softly at the soothing feeling. Maybe he didn't need the fluid to sustain him, but nonetheless, he needed it to soothe his soul.   
“What do you remember?” the Doctor urged. “You said my name. And that of my granddaughter.”  
“Yeah. I'm not surprised you don't remember me. Nine hundred years is a long time to forget a mere Android.”  
“You were Susan's Android,” he breathed in astonishment. “I remember now. She always talked about you, but...”  
“I don't think we met often,” Ianto nodded.  
The Doctor pressed his lips together bitterly. “The older she got, the more she turned out like me. And my son didn't like that, not wanting me in his home. He thought I was nothing more than a stubborn troublemaker. He wanted more for her.”  
“I remember,” Ianto said softly. “But she didn't want to be pressed into any role, just like you.”  
They smiled at each other softly for a moment, the memories of the young woman they'd both loved so dearly uniting them.  
“Why did you leave Gallifrey?” Ianto asked eventually.  
The Doctor shrugged. “There were a lot of reasons. Disagreements with my son for the main part.”  
“So what, you decided to steal a TARDIS and go gallivanting through time and space?” Ianto snorted.  
The Doctor threw him an impish grin.   
Ianto laughed. “And of course Susan went with you.”  
“Sure. She was fed up with the situation at home herself.”  
Ianto became serious once more. “I'm glad you went away.”  
“I know.” The Doctor became serious as well. “A short while later, the Time War began.”  
Ianto shuddered when he started to remember the details. “First, they send in the Warrior-Androids. When they fell against the Daleks, they send the rest of us.” He shook his head bitterly. “Although we were much stronger than a Time Lord, we weren't soldiers.”  
“I know,” the Doctor said once more, and spontaneously put his arm around Ianto's shoulders awkwardly. “I'm so sorry.”  
“Why did you come back for me?” the Android asked, not able to hold back the tears any more when the memories of the days of war and of all the fallen Androids kept haunting him. The Doctor tightened his hold helplessly, but after a while, the Android had composed himself again, and the Doctor let go while taking up his story again.  
“She had a family eventually,” he explained. “Met a nice man here on Earth, and started a family with him. I decided to leave her, then. She should be safe, not gallivanting through time an space.” They smiled at each other. “Although she and I are of the same spirit, unlike me, she wasn't made for this life. Always running, always being in danger, always loosing people. She needed to take up root somewhere, and settle down with a family. But Ianto...” The Doctor looked him firmly in the eye. “Before I left her, she made me promise something. She begged me to save you. Granted, for a long time, neither of us knew of the Time War while we were away, but when we did, she remembered you, being reminded by her own child, and she didn't want something to happen to you. So, I promised her to get you out of there.”  
Ianto blinked at the Time Lord in astonishment. “Me?! But... why me? Why didn't she ask you to save your family?”  
The Doctor shrugged helplessly. “During the fighting, many difficult and wrong decisions were made by the Council. My son was one of them, and she probably felt that it was their own fault that they brought the Daleks upon them. But you and the other Androids... You were victims as much as the normal population of Gallifrey. They weren't soldiers as well, and suffered equally as badly as you did... So, when I had regenerated eventually, had become a younger man, I came back for you. And many years later, for me at least, I returned once more to seal the fate of Gallifrey to stop this war once and for all.”  
Ianto stared into space contemplatively. “I don't remember much. Just flashes. I saw you, being in the TARDIS... I even saw Susan a few times... Then... nothing.”  
“You were badly damaged when I found you. I managed to repair you, and then I took you to Susan. Together, we decided to forge you a new identity and give you a new life as a human, you became Ianto Jones. Finally, I took you into the future. Although she would have like nothing more, Susan thought it best that you didn't stay with her. She was afraid that her father or other Time Lords may come for her some day, and that they would hurt you for deserting the war should they find you with her.”  
“You never told her, right? Of what happened to Gallifrey?”  
The Doctor looked down at the floor, and sighed heavily. “No. I didn't have the heart.”  
“Is... is she still alive?”  
“Yes. Although I haven't seen her in a long time.”  
“Maybe...”  
“Yeah. Maybe I should make her one of the people to say goodbye to in this form.”  
“Yeah... I think, she would like to see you again.”  
“That would be nice... But... you don't hold it against her, do you?”  
“What do you mean?” Ianto blinked at him in confusion.  
“That we didn't take you with us from the beginning. We could have spared you all the trauma and pain of war if we'd taken you with us right from the start.”  
“Oh, Doctor.” Reassuringly, Ianto took the Doctor's hand for a moment, uncharacteristically overcoming his normally distant and formal behaviour. “Of course I don't hold that against her. I may have been her friend, but in the end, I was nothing more than a machine, a servant. But you are her grandfather, and you needed her. It's only natural that you were at the forefront of her mind. She couldn't have predicted the war, by the way. I'm sure if she had known, she would have taken me with you.”  
Relieved, the Doctor smiled at him, and squeezed his hand back before they both let go a little awkwardly.  
Ianto cleared his throat uncomfortably. “What happened then? When you took me into the future?”  
“I brought you to Cardiff. I don't know why Cardiff of all places. I think, I wanted you to stay near the Rift. In theory, it should supply you with trickles of vortex energy, much like Jack's should do. Over the years, it would have steadily recharged your batteries quite nicely.”  
“And how... how did you...”  
“I found Rhiannon. It was a chance meeting, but something reminded me of you when I spoke to her. There was something fierce about her that you also possessed. With the TARDIS' help, I set up a frequency that would let everybody she had ever known think that you were her brother, including herself.”  
Ianto stared at the Doctor with wide eyes. “You can do something like that?!”   
“Why not. It's not so different from your Retcon, only on a much larger scale. And maybe not one hundred percent ethical. But it worked. Together with the falsified documents to prove it, and erasing your memories of your origins, your identity as part of the Jones-family was water-proof. You never had to think back on the life you had to lead, never remembering the war. And I think that was what Susan wanted for you.”  
Ianto frowned. “But... then It can't have been long since you put me up with my family... only a few years. As for you... it has been hundreds of years...”  
“Yeah, I suppose...”  
Ianto felt a little shell-shocked by this. His memories of being human were only a couple of years old?! “But...” he continued shakily, “what about later? One day it should have become obvious that I don't age. Jack knows what to do in such a situation, he knows what's happening to him, but I wouldn't even have known why I wouldn't have aged. Can you imagine my shock then?!”  
The Doctor blushed expectantly.  
“You didn't think about that, didn't you!?” Ianto chuckled drily, and shook his head in astonishment.  
The Doctor mumbled something, but Ianto could only filter out a “can't think of everything”.  
The young man snorted. “Seeing but not observing, hm,” he mocked good-naturedly to which the Doctor blushed even more heavily so that Ianto decided to let him off the hook.  
“That was a lot of trouble to got to,” he took up the thread of their conversation again. “Not only forging me a human identity, but planting false memories in my hard drive as well as in all the memories of the people Rhian knew. Why not simply drop me in the future alone so that I could take my chance?”  
“Because neither Susan nor I wanted you to be alone, Ianto Jones.” The Doctor smiled at him gently.  
Ianto snorted at that. “Doctor, I'm estranged from my family, have despised my father, and fled as soon as I had the chance to London where I stumbled right into the arms of Torchwood One. I may have been better off being alone.”  
“I'm sorry about that. I didn't want you to have memories of a bad childhood.” The Doctor pressed his lips together regretfully. “But I think, it was the right thing to do. The TARDIS knew it was the right thing to do. Not to put all the fault on her, but it has been mostly her decisions which memories were given to you, and she led me to the place where I ran into your sister. Maybe you don't see it, maybe you have to think on a much grander scale. We both have to. If you hadn't left your family because of these problems, you'd never have joined Torchwood.”  
“Sparing myself a lot of pain,” Ianto spat.   
The Doctor grimaced. “You have to believe me, I'm so, so sorry for the pain you had to endure, but nonetheless, I think, it was supposed to happen.”  
“It was supposed to happen that I fall in love with Lisa, and then lose her in this brutal manner?! Canary Wharf was meant to happen?!” Ianto glared at the Time Lord accusingly, but the Doctor remained calm.  
“I think,” he replied levelly, “that you meeting Jack Harkness was meant to be.”  
This made Ianto go completely still, and he stared at the Doctor dumbstruck.   
“The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Maybe it was even Rose's doing when she was the Bad Wolf. She must have seen Jack's suffering after she'd turned him immortal. And even if she couldn't turn him back to mortality, maybe she wanted to do right by him in allowing him all the happiness he could gain from his immortal state and the consequences and suffering that entailed. I'm pretty sure of it actually. This looks like something she would do, leading you into Jack's life. She loved him, she wanted him to be happy. She'd never have wanted him to suffer this much on purpose.”  
“But we can't ask her,” Ianto said shakily, feeling numb and elated at the same time that in the end he may not only be a chance encounter for Jack, a nice fling to pass the time... a blip in time for Jack, but maybe was destined by higher powers to cross paths with him. And to be with him.   
“No. Not any more. She wouldn't have remembered anyway. She lost all memories of what she'd done as Bad Wolf as soon as I pulled the vortex energy from her body.”  
“I understand,” Ianto said slowly.  
“Does it matter?” The Doctor scrutinised him intently. “You're here now.”  
“No, I suppose it doesn't...”  
“Don't look back,” the Doctor advised him. “Only forward.”  
Ianto made an agreeing noise.  
“Doctor?” he asked after a long time during which they'd simply kept silent, each of them dwelling on his own thoughts.  
“Yeah?”  
“Would you take me to Jack now?”

Jack stared at the piece of paper the bartender had given him from “that guy over there”. Had the Doctor lost his mind? Why didn't he simply come over? He looked closely at the Time Lord, forgetting the message in his hand for a moment. He stood tall, and bounced on the balls of his feet, his hands in the pockets of his coat, but when you knew him well, you could see it. He looked weary, bone-weary. And the Doctor coming to visit Jack could only mean one thing: He wanted to say goodbye. He would regenerate, and he would never see this Doctor again. Probably wouldn't see him ever again period.   
Jack swallowed around the lump in his throat. It was the story of his life, wasn't it. In the end, everybody, even the Doctor, would leave him. What was one more loved one to say goodbye to. Pushing away his bitterness, he looked the Time Lord firmly in the eye, and saluted one last time.   
The Doctor smirked, and rolled his eyes at the despicable gesture. Then he nodded at the piece of paper still in Jack's hand.  
Finally, the Captain unfolded the note, and frowned. What?!  
Turn to your left.  
Deciding that pondering the Doctor's latest actions too deeply would only cause a severe headache, he did what the note instructed.   
And froze.  
A few bar stools to his left sat...  
Jack blinked, and turned as white as a sheet. It couldn't be.  
His gaze snapped back to the Doctor who smiled warmly at him.   
Jack felt helpless tears of rage prickling in his eyes. What sort of cruel joke was this?! Was this a doppelganger? An actor? A shape shifter? A pleasure Android? Because one thing Jack knew for sure: The Doctor wouldn't risk a paradox to bring a Ianto from the past or from a parallel universe to Jack. Not for him.   
The young man met Jack's eyes when the Captain finally looked at his supposed surprise again, hurt and accusation in his eyes. But then, the man smiled. And, oh, it was so much like Ianto's smile, the smile he only smiled for Jack.   
The young man came over to him, never letting him out of his sight.  
“Hello, Jack.”  
Jack wanted to back away, but the Jadoon on his right was like a solid wall blocking his flight. “Who are you?!” he demanded angrily, and he hated how much his voice trembled.   
The smile became softer, reassuring, and calming. “You know who I am.”  
Jack shook his head vehemently. “No. It's not possible.”  
“It is. Believe me.”  
He shook his head once more, and mumbled a steady mantra of “no” under his breath.   
Ianto bridged the distance between them, and looked up at Jack who still perched tensely on his bar stool as if it was the one save haven in a tempest. The Captain searched his face frantically, looking desperately for the one clue that told him that this man really was his Ianto. He wanted to believe it so badly.   
In the end, he couldn't say what it was, but the more he looked, he just knew.  
In his heart, he simply knew all of a sudden.   
“Ianto,” he choked out reverently, and Ianto smiled at him with all the love he possessed.   
Without further questioning the hows and whys, Jack hastily slid inelegantly from his stool, almost stumbling, and immediately wrapped his arms around Ianto who caught him in return in a strong, liberating embrace.   
“I love you,” Jack whispered over and over under tears, not caring in the slightest that they stood in the middle of a crowded alien bar, and he only stopped his babbling confession when Ianto drew back from him to pull him into a redeeming kiss.  
End


End file.
